Child-care beliefs and practices evolve to meet the needs of children within changing families and societies. Production technologies, economic structures, formal and non-formal institutions, and ideologies influence the care of young children. Nutritional care varies among premodern agrarian, modern industrial, and postmodern knowledge-based settings. Vital families in which parents and children learn together currently are emerging as the most favourable environment for child care. Policy implications of historic trends are: 1) nutritional care should be added to the definition of children's rights; 2) functional indicators of nutritional care should be built into systems that monitor children's well-being; 3) care services should be available to the whole child in the whole family, through multi-purpose networks of agencies and activities; 4) child and family development programmes should teach parents to enhance children's nutritional care and development; 5) the care motto “Preserve, Protect, Promote” should expand to “Rediscover, Relearn, and Readapt” beneficial caring from the past.
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